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Scurrilous sex scams

I am appalled by the dramatic nonsense being bandied around over this week’s judicial review about the Equality Act. It’s not just the gender ideology cultists, although they are out there spouting turbo-charged nonsense. It’s those MPs, journos and high-profile commentators who still, incredibly, write, speak and tweet on this topic with no regard for…
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They are all dying

but they taught us resilience. With every Palestinian blown to bits, the West’s model child, the apartheid state, dies a little more. With every callously deflected question, our shabby politicians push their government further into fatal contempt. With every mendacious report, the BBC dig the grave of the mainstream media a little deeper. With every…
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To our HBC councillors

Dear Councillor, if you’re reading this – I know you’re busy people. There’s a letter to you in the second half of the text. Feel free to scroll straight on down to the bit headed “Can we please re-discover that word “no”? Long-gone local authorities I remember when “the authorities” were in Wellington Square. If…
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Who are we?

Who are we, the monstrous, pitiless, violent, racist enemy you can’t understand, and can’t defeat? How did we become the despicable, cruel demons you stare at daily in horror? How do we do it? We take our children, as they approach adulthood, and put them in a heroic cult-army where at first they have adventurous…
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EDI: how clever is Elon Musk?

EDI stands for ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’. It’s the corporate-friendly, de-fanged version of anti-racism, anti-sexism and all those other things we need do to combat the obstacles neoliberalism sets up against fair play. The reason most companies spend so much time on business-friendly, colourful beanos like Pride and Stonewall but firmly reject serious campaigns for…
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Jewish not Zionist: an invitation from JVL

Leah Levane, Co-Chair of JVL (Jewish Voice for Labour) kindly wrote the introduction to the UK edition of Marilyn Garson’s latest book, Jewish not Zionist. Her introduction summarizes how the situation we are now challenging in Israel / Palestine came about. It covers the Balfour Declaration, and the likely motivations behind it, and how the…
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Hastings connections

(Hastings loves fireworks) Hastings, UK, has twin town relationships with Béthune (France), Oudenaarde (Belgium), Dordrecht (The Netherlands), and Schwerte (Germany), and Hastings in Sierra Leone, West Africa. I think we’re twinned with the first three because councillors have friends or trade links there. I guess with the last one, it’s because of the name, although…
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What’s a fiscal black hole, and how do you fix it?

It’s what you get when the magic money-tree suffers a crop failure. I don’t know whether our old MP Amber Rudd was the first one to claim “there is no magic money tree”, but she was most definitely one of those stashing their income in tax havens whilst telling us there was no magic solution…
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Rule One: Don’t give up

There’s lots to do, and plenty of people are in action, learning more every day about how it’s done. First, how it’s not done: I think most people have worked out that our party-political system is – if not broken, certainly captured, and not doing what it says on the tin. It’s taking us a…
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Hastings needs a strong voice

On the probable demise of HBC, and a possible citizens’ answer In the first week of the New Year I said this on FB… I was in a towering rage. Sure, the utterly destructive nature of party politics in recent years had pretty much disabled our local council and yes, a dysfunctional council is hard…